Best single exercise for ALL sports

[final_identity]

Heh, that title-line is a teaser (and probably flame-bait, too) but I genuinely think this is true.

The best single exercise for "sport-specific" training that I've ever found, in twenty years (off and on) of body-building and competitive athletics, is indeed applicable as "best" exercise for soccer, for golf, for baseball and cricket, for tennis and any other racquet sport, for hockey (ice and field), field throwing events (discus, javelin, hammer), and even ... yes ... dare I say it? ... that LEAST athletic of all American pastimes, American footless Football.

This exercise is ...

(drumroll please)

... the abdominal twist. (I don't know a more technical name for it.)

The premise is, to use your trunk muscles AGAINST RESISTANCE to rotate the orientation of your upper body relative to the orientation of your lower body. In other words, as the axis of your hips remains the same, the axis of your shoulders rotates first left then right (although not necessarily forward, backward, up, or down).

Nautilus has an excellent machine for this. You sit upright in it, place your shoulder or elbow against a vertical pad that is parallel to your spine and lined up about at your armpit but BEHIND your shoulder, and then you rotate. Thus, you are pushing against the pad to move it backwards (and it, of course, is connected to the cam and the cable and the weights). Do your reps in one direction, reposition the pad behind the other armpit, do them in the other direction.

There are many potential home-brew solutions. Sit-ups with a rotation in them (quite common practice!) provide SOME SMALL amount of stimulus to the rotational abdominal and trunk muscles, but there's very little RESISTANCE TO THE ROTATION. The resistance is to the UPWARD motion, but the TORQUE is free to go or not. Another home-brew, is standing with your back to a partner and alternately passing a heavy medicine ball to one another, thus rotating the trunk. This also provides SOME stimulus. But in both of those, the rotation is against almost no resistance. The machine provides resistance (hence better growth, duh).

One way to create home-brew resistance is to use a rather heavy medicine ball ALONE, no partner, doing the same twist. As you come to the end of the rotation, you must use the proper "twister" muscles to STOP the rotation due to the inertia of the weight you're holding (provided the ball is heavy enough) so you get some benefit.

And of course, you see plenty of well-meaning jocks in the weight room doing the idiot-twister. After they do their crunches, there they stand with the bar over their shoulders and they spin back and forth, as though their obliques were getting a workout. But, against what resistance? Air?

I have found that this one excercise improves all my students' abilities in anything that requires torso twisting. And THINK about it. All those sports mentioned above have similar postures at some point in the middle of their core movement -- the golf swing, overhand (baseball) throw, baseball and cricket batting swing, soccer kick, tennis stroke, they ALL involve one arm back, the opposite leg forward, then SWITCH. Coordinatedly, of course.

It's my contention that the general LACK of use of resistance-training in this one area of abdominal / trunk exercise can separate the men from the boys quite easily. One squad does the dumb stand-up-and-spin thing ("air" resistance only), another sits in the Nautilus, then they play off in the FA Cup Final? No brainer, the resistance-training wins, all other things being equal.

It's a last frontier in sport-specific training. So few trainers and coaches that I've met realize that their oblique / rotational program is generally assigned to players to be done against almost no resistance. But standing upright and twisting your trunk? What weight are you overcoming? Horizontal gravity? Wind resistance? I mean, really ... There's a real "why didn't I think of that?" come-uppance to be had in the halls of collegiate athletics, I'm tellin' ya.

Your thoughts?

[ARamsey92]

Originally Posted by final_identity

and even ... yes ... dare I say it? ... that LEAST athletic of all American pastimes, American footless Football.

First off, go **** yourself.

Now that I've got that out of my system, what you're saying sounds interesting, but do you have any credible sources to back-up this claim? You seem to know what you're talking about, but just about anyone that can type well can sound smart on the internet. Saying this is the "best single exercise for all sports" is a very bold statement to be making and I'm sure that most of the people here would like to know what you're basing that claim off of.

[SuicideGripMe]

Also called Russian or Soviet twist. Pavel and kettlebell enthusiasts use it. It teaches good torque for throwing a punch and throwing. However, if you did only that, I doubt youd be any good. Best exercise would have to be a clean and press (incorporates every muscle).

[final_identity]

Originally Posted by SuicideGripMe

Also called Russian or Soviet twist. Pavel and kettlebell enthusiasts use it. It teaches good torque for throwing a punch and throwing. However, if you did only that, I doubt youd be any good. Best exercise would have to be a clean and press (incorporates every muscle).

Yeah, I'd have to agree, the "best overall" is probably the clean AND press, not merely because that's actually about six exercises all rolled into one. Mine is suggested as the "missing ingredient" more than the "if you do this you don't have to do anything else."

I suppose what I should have titled the thread was, "Best Exercise for any sport, given that you're already doing sport-specific training and practicing a lot." Oh, and I should have included, "in my opinion" because, well, oh gee ... don't feed the energy monsters.

[vikings1142]

Originally Posted by ARamsey92

First off, go **** yourself.

hahaha

[hardwork08]

SI talked about that in T.O.'s issue a few weeks ago

[Robby_ #52]

Originally Posted by ARamsey92

First off, go **** yourself.

Now that I've got that out of my system, what you're saying sounds interesting, but do you have any credible sources to back-up this claim? You seem to know what you're talking about, but just about anyone that can type well can sound smart on the internet. Saying this is the "best single exercise for all sports" is a very bold statement to be making and I'm sure that most of the people here would like to know what you're basing that claim off of.

Seconded, especially the first statement.

[chickeneater]

wow! I will include that in my 5x5 program right away. In fact, I will be replacing squats w/ it! Brilliant!

[hardwork08]

he didn't mean that ab work alone will give results, more like it is the exercise that will raise your play. stronger core improves lateral quickness

[JDM-93_Z28]

Originally Posted by ARamsey92

First off, go **** yourself.

Exactly what i was thinking lol.

Final_Identity whats your favorite sport.....soccer? Oh and where r u from?

I agree with Suicide...exactly what i was thinking, the clean and press. I hate doing it but it is oh so good for developing power.

[mattfootball834]

id have to say powerclean or clean and press but i don't like clean and press it doesn't feel like u get enough work for your legs because u have to use light enough weight that u can press it

[etaylor88]

number one: i agree with everyone, definitely not the most important exercise out there, not even close

number two (i can't believe no one's mentioned it so far): american football produces the best athletes in the world. look at the athleticism of NFL wide recievers, running backs, linebackers, QBs, DBs, and even linemen for their strength and power. america's least atheletic past time (and i'm canadian by the way)....**** you

[LSMalibu]

Maybe we're only talking about resistance training, but what about sprints?

[final_identity]

Agreed about American football professionals. Some of the dudes I see on TV (don't know their names) are built like rocks. Eddie George I think is one.

My only complaint about Amn Football is that it doesn't encourage many of the common folk to get involved in a lifetime of healthy activity, since it's largely a non-participant sport. Couch potatoes are produced by a culture that focuses on football and other television athletics.

So, it's my unscientific guess, that Amn Football professionals are awesome athletes but Amn Football fans in general are one of the world's most obese fan populations. Could just be because the citizenry in general is one of the world's most obese ... but then we have a chicken-and-egg conundrum.

Either way, the NFL is the best thing the USA has going! Beats the heck out of our foreign policy ...

[Touchdown Boy]

Originally Posted by final_identity

So, it's my unscientific guess, that Amn Football professionals are awesome athletes but Amn Football fans in general are one of the world's most obese fan populations. Could just be because the citizenry in general is one of the world's most obese ... but then we have a chicken-and-egg conundrum.

Ummmmmmmmm... I would disagree. North Americans in general are fat because of how they eat. North American culture generally likes to take meals from other countries, deep fry the **** out of them, and then eat it. Perhaps the sedentary lifestyle that watching football might produce could be loosely linked... but you are grasping at straws man. You would have to conclude that these fat obese fans spend a significant amount of time watching football... Last time i checked sitting on your ass for 6 months of sundays all day, monday nights, thanksgiving weekend and christmas are not the main causes of obesity year round. I'm not a doctor but I predict that the lifestyle choices of people on the other 5-6 days of the week play a bigger role in why North Americans are so fat.

[HunterFB51]

So american football doesn't encourage millions upon millions of teenage boys to go and play for their high school football team every year? If you lived in america you'd be eating your words right about now. Why do you think that about half of the threads in the sports training forum are dedicated to American football alone. Basically, you're a moron.

[pbradish]

I have to agree with Clean and Press.